Seeking Volunteers for Interviews

[Jennifer Fortad]

I am writing to ask for your assistance

I am sensitive to the fact that past researchers have objectified the intersex community and treated many as if they were guinea pigs and lab rats. I hope no one participating in this study will ever feel that I have done this. I hope having Dr. Milton Diamond as my research advisor will ensure that this possibility is avoided.

My motivation for doing gender based research is the feeling of betrayal and outrage toward the medical community when I first learned about the experiences of intersex children through the work of Phyllis Burke (Gender Shock), ISNA, and GIRES. I've spent the past 2 years (26 months to be exact) designing a sociological study that can offer up some scientific evidence to convince the medical establishment and society at large that infant genital surgery is a travesty, mislead by their notion that gender is socially constructed. Its the best I can offer, but trying to tear down the 30 years of feminist and social theory that came out of Money's early publications requires just that.

I believe that in order to change gender and sex based discrimination we need to challenge the larger assumptions that sex and gender are the same, and that gender is only a matter of socialization.

I am currently conducting a study of gender identity formation as a mix
of social and biological elements, using sociological methods to expand
on the work of Dr. Milton Diamond. Mickey is actually a member of the
committee overseeing this study, and has had a huge influence on my
work. As a sociologist, I have been dismayed that little has been
studied or written on gender that factors in his work: almost all
sociological theorizing has cast gender as exclusively socially
constructed, a perspective that I have found too many exceptions to for
me to embrace.

Contemporary social problems directly related to society?s ?one-size-fits-all? understanding of gender include the treatment of intersex conditions as medical emergencies in need of a cure, the construction of deviance around gender bending behaviors, and the classification of cross-gender identification as a mental disorder.

This study is directed toward improving our understanding of how gender identity develops at the individual level, as well as to document the impact that rigid definitions of gender have for individuals as members of society.

Volunteers of all sexes, races, ethnicities, genders, sexualities, and nationalities are being sought for this study. Participation is strictly confidential. The responses will be aggregated for analysis, protecting the anonymity of participants.

As a volunteer, you will be asked to discuss how you think of yourself as a man, a woman, or occupying an intermediate position in the gender continuum.

Interviews can be done in writing, using the internet as a means of receiving and returning the interview questionnaire. This will ensure complete privacy and confidentiality for participants.

If you would like to volunteer for this study please contact me by email at

Jennifer Fortado
Department of Sociology
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742